Partnership between industry leaders set to invigorate UK market

Traditional technology’s demise

Project Lightning from Virgin Media Business is adding millions of homes and businesses to the network. But what’s missing? Because today it’s not just about voice and data lines.

The unification of communication around IP technology has blurred the boundaries between on-prem hardware and the network. In fact, the cloud has largely made the former redundant, while lockdown has thrust home working to the fore, a further nail in the coffin of traditional PBXs and ACDs.

Now everything’s on a single platform

Recognising this fact, Virgin Media Business was bridging the gap with a unified comms partner, but that firm’s slow and incomplete roadmap was frustrating. Things got worse when a major player acquired the partner. Virgin Media Business found itself trying to co-operate with a sprawling company, of which cloud was only one division.

Andrew Halliwell, Product and Transformation Director, Virgin Media Business, says: “We started looking for evergreen cloud contact centre capability that would keep pace with the market. But our discussions with 8x8 brought home the meaning of born-in-the-cloud. Their speed of platform evolution is constantly accelerating. Bringing UCaaS and CCaaS together on a single platform with everything fully integrated in one common modular cloud is mind blowing.”

Creating a shared culture

A contract between Virgin Media Business and 8x8 was signed in May 2020 and the dual-branded product was fully launched in September of that year. That reflects a core 8x8 aspiration of moving customers from PSTN to digital in 90 days. Andrew Halliwell adds: “We really liked the sharp focus 8x8 had on the UK market and regional public sector and enterprise. That was something else that stood them apart from other putative global cloud platform providers.”

The speed of launch was a great time-to-market achievement. Designing and implementing billing, deployment, marketing, and sales support processes, 8x8 fielded a team of over 25 people. They were faced by a 40-strong team of Virgin Media Business people, largely focused on product development.

James White, Director of Marketing, Virgin Media Business, says: “With genuine commitment from both sides, we had twice-weekly meetings focused on creating a shared culture. And all of that was done during the worst of the pandemic, working virtually on video conferences, and document sharing. It was a testament to both organisations in making a real effort to understand each other.”

Virgin Media Business and 8x8 tackling customer challenges

Talking to a local authority in the UK, the Virgin Media Business and 8x8 alliance was asked if it would be able to extend intelligent IVR to multilingual voice recognition. The council’s incumbent contact centre technology vendor was struggling to deliver that functionality, and a market sweep of other traditional suppliers had also drawn a blank. 8x8 technology already supported the feature and was evolving at a speed that offered similarly advanced capabilities in other areas too.

Andrew Halliwell says: “What sealed the deal was showing the completeness of the 8x8 product roadmap, the strength of an ecosystem extending through IP networking and cloud technologies, and the benefits of working with a supplier that develops and owns in-house intellectual property. Having experts from both companies in the team was crucial.”

Quadrupled sales levels

Embracing the full range of 8x8 solutions from unified communications and collaboration to cloud contact centres, customer traction and adoption have been like lightning.

The priority was to build a good sales pipeline. That quickly ramped up by the end of the first quarter to 170 distinct opportunities countrywide. At the end of the second quarter, monthly recurring revenue was rocketing past the US$2 million mark. Putting those figures in perspective, they’re roughly four times the level Virgin Media Business managed with its previous cloud partner.

How did they do that? James White says: “Working together on a joint marketing execution basis, we built a single value proposition that’s consistent from top to bottom of the funnel. It made sense to put our brands alongside each other rather than white label 8x8 products and services. Unified messaging bursts through collateral and presentations from two great companies co-operating end-to-end across the entire customer journey.”

It’s not just that. The face-to-face customer engagement model goes well beyond the norm, with 8x8 and Virgin Media Business people indistinguishable when standing shoulder to shoulder.

“The work we did on culture means personalities and styles match perfectly,” adds Andrew. “In front of each other and in front of the customer it just looks and feels like the same organisation. That’s a powerful and effective statement to make. It’s not something we do with all our partners by any means.”

Move towards hybrid working is acting as a deal accelerator

The interpersonal strength of the partnership reflects the integrity of the 8x8 cloud platform. It plays exceedingly well against the drawbacks of traditional PBX and analogue connectivity.

“Especially in the public sector, customers are waking up to the fact they can deliver all services from a single point and save budget on call costs, real estate overheads, maintenance and support, and many other areas,” says Andrew Halliwell. “In fact, the move towards hybrid working has brought that forward, which has amplified the sales pipeline.”

Increasing brand equity

Sitting behind the deal with 8x8 is the Virgin Media Business strategy to move from a historic high-speed data connectivity stance to one where it can help public sector and enterprise customers evolve away from traditional fixed connectivity between data centres and offices. The intention is to open a cloud-facing world where organisations will be able to overcome pandemics and such challenges without breaking their stride.

Maintaining the Virgin Media Business ‘connect, protect, empower’ mantra, the 8x8 alliance is about providing clients with the collaboration tools needed to optimise workforces and productivity, while offering fulfilling customer experiences that both serve and retain.

Essential to the company’s contribution to the huge global conglomerate of which it is part, increasing brand equity is vital. James White concludes: “When you look at the messaging we’re developing, it’s completely blended. It’s not just Virgin Media Business or 8x8. We’re proud of our brand and our identity and we bring that openly into this partnership. The intent is for the customer to feel there’s a unique flavour to it. For them to feel proud of what we’ve helped them achieve, talk to others about it, and grow their businesses and ours.”

About Virgin Media Business

Choose Virgin Media Business and you’ll connect to the largest fibre optic network in the UK. It’s their crown jewel. It’s superfast and incredibly robust. And since it reaches right to the kerb, it’s quick and easy to deliver directly into your premises.

Consider these facts:

• They currently handle up to 86,000 calls a minute and during busy periods they carry over half-a-terabyte of data every second
• Their network has 38,000 breakout points, 186,000km of fibre-optic cabling, 330 Ethernet nodes and over 38,000 street cabinets
• They are the first UK organisation to achieve full PSN certification, and the first organisation with national security certification
• For over 20 years they have worked with national and local organisations, helping meet new customer expectations and rise to market challenges

Now, through our partnership if you’re looking to evolve your business, delight your customers, empower your staff, or unleash your digital potential, we provide an unparalleled range of communication, collaboration, and contact centre technologies.